What did they see? What you can see, what anybody can see on a clear night when the Moon is full—only our friends had all the advantages of a closer view. From Tycho, as a focus, radiated in all directions, as from the head of a peeled orange, more than a hundred luminous streaks or channels, edges raised, middle depressed—or perhaps vice versa, owing to an optical illusion—some at least twelve miles wide, some fully thirty. In certain directions they ran for a distance of at least six hundred miles, and seemed—especially towards the west, northwest, and north—to cover half the southern hemisphere. One of these flashes extended as far as Neander on the 40th meridian; another, curving around so as to furrow the Mare Nectaris, came to an end on the chain of the Pyrenees, after a course of perhaps a little more than seven hundred miles. On the east, some of them barred with luminous network the Mare Nubium and even the Mare Humorum.
The most puzzling feature of these glittering streaks was that they ran their course directly onward, apparently neither obstructed by valley, crater, or mountain ridge however high. They all started, as said before, from one common focus, Tycho's crater. From this they certainly all seemed to emanate. Could they be rivers of lava once vomited from that centre by resistless volcanic agency and afterwards crystallized into glassy rock? This idea of Herschel's, Barbican had no hesitation in qualifying as exceedingly absurd. Rivers running in perfectly straight lines, across plains, and up as well as down mountains!
"Other astronomers," he continued, "have looked on these streaks as a peculiar kind of moraines, that is, long lines of erratic blocks belched forth with mighty power at the period of Tycho's own upheaval."
"How do you like that theory, Barbican," asked the Captain.
"It's not a particle better than Herschel's," was the reply; "no volcanic action could project rocks to a distance of six or seven hundred miles, not to talk of laying them down so regularly that we can't detect a break in them."
"Happy thought!" cried Ardan suddenly; "it seems to me that I can tell the cause of these radiating streaks!"
"Let us hear it," said Barbican.
"Certainly," was Ardan's reply; "these streaks are all only the parts of what we call a 'star,' as made by a stone striking ice; or by a ball, a pane of glass."
"Not bad," smiled Barbican approvingly; "only where is the hand that flung the stone or threw the ball?"
"The hand is hardly necessary," replied Ardan, by no means disconcerted; "but as for the ball, what do you say to a comet?"
Here M'Nicholl laughed so loud that Ardan was seriously irritated. However, before he could say anything cutting enough to make the Captain mind his manners, Barbican had quickly resumed:
"Dear friend, let the comets alone, I beg of you; the old astronomers fled to them on all occasions and made them explain every difficulty—"
—"The comets were all used up long ago—" interrupted M'Nicholl.
—"Yes," went on Barbican, as serenely as a judge, "comets, they said, had fallen on the surface in meteoric showers and crushed in the crater cavities; comets had dried up the water; comets had whisked off the atmosphere; comets had done everything. All pure assumption! In your case, however, friend Michael, no comet whatever is necessary. The shock that gave rise to your great 'star' may have come from the interior rather than the exterior. A violent contraction of the lunar crust in the process of cooling may have given birth to your gigantic 'star' formation."
"I accept the amendment," said Ardan, now in the best of humor and looking triumphantly at M'Nicholl.
"An English scientist," continued Barbican, "Nasmyth by name, is decidedly of your opinion, especially ever since a little experiment of his own has confirmed him in it. He filled a glass globe with water, hermetically sealed it, and then plunged it into a hot bath. The enclosed water, expanding at a greater rate than the glass, burst the latter, but, in doing so, it made a vast number of cracks all diverging in every direction from the focus of disruption. Something like this he conceives to have taken place around Tycho. As the crust cooled, it cracked. The lava from the interior, oozing out, spread itself on both sides of the cracks. This certainly explains pretty satisfactorily why those flat glistening streaks are of much greater width than the fissures through which the lava had at first made its way to the surface."
"Well done for an Englishman!" cried Ardan in great spirits.
"He's no Englishman," said M'Nicholl, glad to have an opportunity of coming off with some credit. "He is the famous Scotch engineer who invented the steam hammer, the steam ram, and discovered the 'willow leaves' in the Sun's disc."
"Better and better," said Ardan—"but, powers of Vulcan! What makes it so hot? I'm actually roasting!"
This observation was hardly necessary to make his companions conscious that by this time they felt extremely uncomfortable. The heat had become quite oppressive. Between the natural caloric of the Sun and the reflected caloric of the Moon, the Projectile was fast turning into a regular bake oven. This transition from intense cold to intense heat was already about quite as much as they could bear.
"What shall we do, Barbican?" asked Ardan, seeing that for some time no one else appeared inclined to say a word.
"Nothing, at least yet awhile, friend Ardan," replied Barbican, "I have been watching the thermometer carefully for the last few minutes, and, though we are at present at 38° centigrade, or 100° Fahrenheit, I have noticed that the mercury is slowly falling. You can also easily remark for yourself that the floor of the Projectile is turning away more and more from the lunar surface. From this I conclude quite confidently, and I see that the Captain agrees with me, that all danger of death from intense heat, though decidedly alarming ten minutes ago, is over for the present and, for some time at least, it may be dismissed from further consideration."
"I'm not very sorry for it," said Ardan cheerfully; "neither to be baked like a pie in an oven nor roasted like a fat goose before a fire is the kind of death I should like to die of."
"Yet from such a death you would suffer no more than your friends the Selenites are exposed to every day of their lives," said the Captain, evidently determined on getting up an argument.
"I understand the full bearing of your allusion, my dear Captain," replied Ardan quickly, but not at all in a tone showing that he was disposed to second M'Nicholl's expectations.
He was, in fact, fast losing all his old habits of positivism. Latterly he had seen much, but he had reflected more. The deeper he had reflected, the more inclined he had become to accept the conclusion that the less he knew. Hence he had decided that if M'Nicholl wanted an argument it should not be with him. All speculative disputes he should henceforth avoid; he would listen with pleasure to all that could be urged on each side; he might even skirmish a little here and there as the spirit moved him; but a regular pitched battle on a subject purely speculative he was fully determined never again to enter into.
"Yes, dear Captain," he continued, "that pointed arrow of yours has by no means missed its mark, but I can't deny that my faith is beginning to be what you call a little 'shaky' in the existence of my friends the Selenites. However, I should like to have your square opinion on the matter. Barbican's also. We have witnessed many strange lunar phenomena lately, closer and clearer than mortal eye ever rested on them before. Has what we have seen confirmed any theory of yours or confounded any hypothesis? Have you seen enough to induce you to adopt decided conclusions? I will put the question formally. Do you, or do you not, think that the Moon resembles the Earth in being the abode of animals and intelligent beings? Come, answer, messieurs. Yes, or no?"
"I think we can answer your question categorically," replied Barbican, "if you modify its form a little."
"Put the question any way you please," said Ardan; "only you answer it! I'm not particular about the form."
"Good," said Barbican; "the question, being a double one, demands a double answer. First: Is the Moon