JULES VERNE AUTHOR OF "FROM THE EARTH TO THE MOON", "TO THE SUN!" AND "OFF ON A COMET!" BY ROTH ILLUSTRATED PHILADELPHIA DAVID MCKAY, PUBLISHER 23 SOUTH NINTH STREET PRELIMINARY CHAPTER, RESUMING THE FIRST PART OF THE WORK AND SERVING AS AN INTRODUCTION TO THE SECOND. A few years ago the world was suddenly astounded by hearing of an experiment of a most novel and daring nature, altogether unprecedented in the annals of science. The BALTIMORE GUN CLUB, a society of artillerymen started in America during the great Civil War, had conceived the idea of nothing less than ...Read More

CHAPTER II. THE FIRST HALF HOUR. What had taken place within the Projectile? What effect had been produced by frightful concussion? Had Barbican's ingenuity been attended with a fortunate result? Had the shock been sufficiently deadened by the springs, the buffers, the water layers, and the partitions so readily ruptured? Had their combined effect succeeded in counteracting the tremendous violence of a velocity of 12,000 yards a second, actually sufficient to carry them from London to New York in six minutes? These, and a hundred other questions of a similar nature were asked that night by the millions who ...Read More

CHAPTER III. THEY MAKE THEMSELVES AT HOME AND FEEL QUITE COMFORTABLE. This curious explanation given, and its soundness immediately the three friends were soon fast wrapped in the arms of Morpheus. Where in fact could they have found a spot more favorable for undisturbed repose? On land, where the dwellings, whether in populous city or lonely country, continually experience every shock that thrills the Earth's crust? At sea, where between waves or winds or paddles or screws or machinery, everything is tremor, quiver or jar? In the air, where the balloon is incessantly twirling, oscillating, on account of the ...Read More

CHAPTER IV. A CHAPTER FOR THE CORNELL GIRLS. No incident worth recording occurred during the night, if night indeed could be called. In reality there was now no night or even day in the Projectile, or rather, strictly speaking, it was always night on the upper end of the bullet, and always day on the lower. Whenever, therefore, the words night and day occur in our story, the reader will readily understand them as referring to those spaces of time that are so called in our Earthly almanacs, and were so measured by the travellers' chronometers. The repose of ...Read More

CHAPTER V. THE COLDS OF SPACE. How could they imagine that the Observatory men had committed such a blunder? would not believe it possible. He made the Captain go over his calculation again and again; but no flaw was to be found in it. He himself carefully examined it, figure after figure, but he could find nothing wrong. They both took up the formula and subjected it to the strongest tests; but it was invulnerable. There was no denying the fact. The Cambridge professors had undoubtedly blundered in saying that an initial velocity of 12,000 yards a second would ...Read More

CHAPTER VI. INSTRUCTIVE CONVERSATION. On the fourth of December, the Projectile chronometers marked five o'clock in the morning, just the travellers woke up from a pleasant slumber. They had now been 54 hours on their journey. As to lapse of time, they had passed not much more than half of the number of hours during which their trip was to last; but, as to lapse of space, they had already accomplished very nearly the seven-tenths of their passage. This difference between time and distance was due to the regular retardation of their velocity. They looked at the earth through ...Read More

CHAPTER VII. A HIGH OLD TIME. A new phenomenon, therefore, strange but logical, startling but admitting of easy explanation, now presented to their view, affording a fresh subject for lively discussion. Not that they disputed much about it. They soon agreed on a principle from which they readily deducted the following general law: Every object thrown out of the Projectile should partake of the Projectile's motion: it should therefore follow the same path, and never cease to move until the Projectile itself came to a stand-still. But, in sober truth, they were at anything but a loss of subjects ...Read More

CHAPTER VIII. THE NEUTRAL POINT. What had taken place? Whence proceeded this strange intoxication whose consequences might have proved disastrous? A little forgetfulness on Ardan's part had done the whole mischief, but fortunately M'Nicholl was able to remedy it in time. After a regular fainting spell several minutes long, the Captain was the first man to return to consciousness and the full recovery of his intellectual faculties. His first feelings were far from pleasant. His stomach gnawed him as if he had not eaten for a week, though he had taken breakfast only a few hours before; his eyes ...Read More

CHAPTER IX. A LITTLE OFF THE TRACK. Barbican's mind was now completely at rest at least on one subject. original force of the discharge had been great enough to send the Projectile beyond the neutral line. Therefore, there was no longer any danger of its falling back to the Earth. Therefore, there was no longer any danger of its resting eternally motionless on the point of the counteracting attractions. The next subject to engage his attention was the question: would the Projectile, under the influence of lunar attraction, succeed in reaching its destination? The only way in which it ...Read More

CHAPTER X. THE OBSERVERS OF THE MOON. Barbican's happy conjecture had probably hit the nail on the head. The even of a second may amount to millions of miles if you only have your lines long enough. The Projectile had certainly gone off its direct course; whatever the cause, the fact was undoubted. It was a great pity. The daring attempt must end in a failure due altogether to a fortuitous accident, against which no human foresight could have possibly taken precaution. Unless in case of the occurrence of some other most improbable accident, reaching the Moon was evidently ...Read More

CHAPTER XI. FACT AND FANCY. "Have you ever seen the Moon?" said a teacher ironically one day in class one of his pupils. "No, sir;" was the pert reply; "but I think I can safely say I've heard it spoken about." Though saying what he considered a smart thing, the pupil was probably perfectly right. Like the immense majority of his fellow beings, he had looked at the Moon, heard her talked of, written poetry about her, but, in the strict sense of the term, he had probably never seen her—that is—scanned her, examined her, surveyed her, inspected her, ...Read More

CHAPTER XII. A BIRD'S EYE VIEW OF THE LUNAR MOUNTAINS. I am rather inclined to believe myself that not word of Ardan's rhapsody had been ever heard by Barbican or M'Nicholl. Long before he had spoken his last words, they had once more become mute as statues, and now were both eagerly watching, pencil in hand, spyglass to eye, the northern lunar hemisphere towards which they were rapidly but indirectly approaching. They had fully made up their minds by this time that they were leaving far behind them the central point which they would have probably reached half an ...Read More

CHAPTER XIII. LUNAR LANDSCAPES At half past two in the morning of December 6th, the travellers crossed the 30th parallel, at a distance from the lunar surface of 625 miles, reduced to about 6 by their spy-glasses. Barbican could not yet see the least probability of their landing at any point of the disc. The velocity of the Projectile was decidedly slow, but for that reason extremely puzzling. Barbican could not account for it. At such a proximity to the Moon, the velocity, one would think, should be very great indeed to be able to counteract the lunar attraction. ...Read More

CHAPTER XIV. A NIGHT OF FIFTEEN DAYS. The Projectile being not quite 30 miles from the Moon's north pole the startling phenomenon, recorded in our last chapter, took place, a few seconds were quite sufficient to launch it at once from the brightest day into the unknown realms of night. The transition was so abrupt, so unexpected, without the slightest shading off, from dazzling effulgence to Cimmerian gloom, that the Moon seemed to have been suddenly extinguished like a lamp when the gas is turned off. "Where's the Moon?" cried Ardan in amazement. "It appears as if she had ...Read More

CHAPTER XV. GLIMPSES AT THE INVISIBLE. In spite of the dreadful condition in which the three friends now found and the still more dreadful future that awaited them, it must be acknowledged that Ardan bravely kept up his spirits. And his companions were just as cheerful. Their philosophy was quite simple and perfectly intelligible. What they could bear, they bore without murmuring. When it became unbearable, they only complained, if complaining would do any good. Imprisoned in an iron shroud, flying through profound darkness into the infinite abysses of space, nearly a quarter million of miles distant from all ...Read More

CHAPTER XVI. THE SOUTHERN HEMISPHERE. Exceedingly narrow and exceedingly fortunate had been the escape of the Projectile. And from danger too the most unlikely and the most unexpected. Who would have ever dreamed of even the possibility of such an encounter? And was all danger over? The sight of one of these erratic bolides certainly justified the gravest apprehensions of our travellers regarding the existence of others. Worse than the sunken reefs of the Southern Seas or the snags of the Mississippi, how could the Projectile be expected to avoid them? Drifting along blindly through the boundless ethereal ocean, ...Read More

CHAPTER XVII. TYCHO. It was now exactly six o'clock in the evening. The Sun, completely clear of all contact the lunar disc, steeped the whole Projectile in his golden rays. The travellers, vertically over the Moon's south pole, were, as Barbican soon ascertained, about 30 miles distant from it, the exact distance they had been from the north pole—a proof that the elliptic curve still maintained itself with mathematical rigor. For some time, the travellers' whole attention was concentrated on the glorious Sun. His light was inexpressibly cheering; and his heat, soon penetrating the walls of the Projectile, infused ...Read More

CHAPTER XVIII. PUZZLING QUESTIONS. It was not until the Projectile had passed a little beyond Tycho's immense concavity that and his friends had a good opportunity for observing the brilliant streaks sent so wonderfully flying in all directions from this celebrated mountain as a common centre. They examined them for some time with the closest attention. What could be the nature of this radiating aureola? By what geological phenomena could this blazing coma have been possibly produced? Such questions were the most natural things in the world for Barbican and his companions to propound to themselves, as indeed they ...Read More

CHAPTER XIX. IN EVERY FIGHT, THE IMPOSSIBLE WINS. No matter what we have been accustomed to, it is sad bid it farewell forever. The glimpse of the Moon's wondrous world imparted to Barbican and his companions had been, like that of the Promised Land to Moses on Mount Pisgah, only a distant and a dark one, yet it was with inexpressibly mournful eyes that, silent and thoughtful, they now watched her fading away slowly from their view, the conviction impressing itself deeper and deeper in their souls that, slight as their acquaintance had been, it was never to be ...Read More

CHAPTER XX. OFF THE PACIFIC COAST. "Well, Lieutenant, how goes the sounding?" "Pretty lively, Captain; we're nearly through;" replied Lieutenant. "But it's a tremendous depth so near land. We can't be more than 250 miles from the California coast." "The depression certainly is far deeper than I had expected," observed Captain Bloomsbury. "We have probably lit on a submarine valley channelled out by the Japanese Current." "The Japanese Current, Captain?" "Certainly; that branch of it which breaks on the western shores of North America and then flows southeast towards the Isthmus of Panama." "That may account for it, Captain," ...Read More

CHAPTER XXI. NEWS FOR MARSTON! In a few minutes, consciousness had restored order on board the Susquehanna, but the was as great as ever. They had escaped by a hairsbreadth the terrible fate of being both burned and drowned without a moment's warning, without a single soul being left alive to tell the fatal tale; but on this neither officer nor man appeared to bestow the slightest thought. They were wholly engrossed with the terrible catastrophe that had befallen the famous adventurers. What was the loss of the Susquehanna and all it contained, in comparison to the loss experienced ...Read More

CHAPTER XXII. ON THE WINGS OF THE WIND. Leaving M'Connell and a few other Cambridge men to take charge the Great Telescope, Marston and Belfast in little more than an hour after the receipt of the exciting dispatch, were scudding down the slopes of Long's Peak by the only possible route—the inclined railroad. This mode of travelling, however, highly satisfactory as far as it went, ceased altogether at the mountain foot, at the point where the Dale River formed a junction with Cache la Poudre Creek. But Marston, having already mapped out the whole journey with some care and ...Read More

CHAPTER XXIII. THE CLUB MEN GO A FISHING. Captain Bloomsbury was perfectly right when he said that almost everything ready for the commencement of the great work which the Club men had to accomplish. Considering how much was required, this was certainly saying a great deal; but here also, as on many other occasions, fortune had singularly favored the Club men. San Francisco Bay, as everybody knows, though one of the finest and safest harbors in the world, is not without some danger from hidden rocks. One of these in particular, the Anita Rock as it was called, lying ...Read More

CHAPTER XXIV. FAREWELL TO THE BALTIMORE GUN CLUB. The intense interest of our extraordinary but most veracious history having its culmination at the end of the last chapter, our absorbing chronicle might with every propriety have been then and there concluded; but we can't part from our gracious and most indulgent reader before giving him a few more details which may be instructive perhaps, if not amusing. No doubt he kindly remembers the world-wide sympathy with which our three famous travellers had started on their memorable trip to the Moon. If so, he may be able to form some ...Read More