Free All Around the Moon by Jules Verne Page B

we're still going up!"
    "Glory, glory, hallelujah!" sang M'Nicholl, in the highest excitement.
    " Vive ce cher Barbican! " cried Ardan, bursting into French as usual whenever his feelings had the better of him.
    "Of course we're marching on!" continued M'Nicholl, "and I know the reason why, too. Those 400,000 pounds of gun-cotton gave us greater initial velocity than we had expected!"
    "You're right, Captain!" added Barbican; "besides, you must not forget that, by getting rid of the water, the Projectile was relieved of considerable weight!"
    "Correct again!" cried the Captain. "I had not thought of that!"
    "Therefore, my brave boys," continued Barbican, with some excitement; "away with melancholy! We're all right!"
    "Yes; everything is lovely and the goose hangs high!" cried the Captain, who on grand occasions was not above a little slang.
    "Talking of goose reminds me of breakfast," cried Ardan; "I assure you, my fright has not taken away my appetite!"
    "Yes," continued Barbican. "Captain, you're quite right. Our initial velocity very fortunately was much greater than what our Cambridge friends had calculated for us!"
    "Hang our Cambridge friends and their calculations!" cried Ardan, with some asperity; "as usual with your scientific men they've more brass than brains! If we're not now bed-fellows with the oysters in the Gulf of Mexico, no thanks to our kind Cambridge friends. But talking of oysters, let me remind you again that breakfast is ready."
    The meal was a most joyous one. They ate much, they talked more, but they laughed most. The little incident of Algebra had certainly very much enlivened the situation.
    "Now, my boys," Ardan went on, "all things thus turning out quite comfortable, I would just ask you why we should not succeed? We are fairly started. No breakers ahead that I can see. No rock on our road. It is freer than the ships on the raging ocean, aye, freer than the balloons in the blustering air. But the ship arrives at her destination; the balloon, borne on the wings of the wind, rises to as high an altitude as can be endured; why then should not our Projectile reach the Moon?"
    "It will reach the Moon!" nodded Barbican.
    "We shall reach the Moon or know for what!" cried M'Nicholl, enthusiastically.
    "The great American nation must not be disappointed!" continued Ardan. "They are the only people on Earth capable of originating such an enterprise! They are the only people capable of producing a Barbican!"
    "Hurrah!" cried M'Nicholl.
    "That point settled," continued the Frenchman, "another question comes up to which I have not yet called your attention. When we get to the Moon, what shall we do there? How are we going to amuse ourselves? I'm afraid our life there will be awfully slow!"
    His companions emphatically disclaimed the possibility of such a thing.
    "You may deny it, but I know better, and knowing better, I have laid in my stores accordingly. You have but to choose. I possess a varied assortment. Chess, draughts, cards, dominoes—everything in fact, but a billiard table?"
    "What!" exclaimed Barbican; "cumbered yourself with such gimcracks?"
    "Such gimcracks are not only good to amuse ourselves with, but are eminently calculated also to win us the friendship of the Selenites."
    "Friend Michael," said Barbican, "if the Moon is inhabited at all, her inhabitants must have appeared several thousand years before the advent of Man on our Earth, for there seems to be very little doubt that Luna is considerably older than Terra in her present state. Therefore, Selenites, if their brain is organized like our own, must have by this time invented all that we are possessed of, and even much which we are still to invent in the course of ages. The probability is that, instead of their learning from us, we shall have much to learn from them."
    "What!" asked Ardan, "you think they have artists like Phidias, Michael Angelo and Raphael?"
    "Certainly."
    "And poets like Homer, Virgil, Dante, Shakspeare, Göthe and