But the velocity being undeniably very moderate, how explain such a decided resistance to Lunar attraction?
Had the Projectile come within the sphere of some strange unknown influence?
Did the neighborhood of some mysterious body retain it firmly imbedded in ether?
That it would never reach the Moon, was now beyond all doubt; but where was it going?
Nearer to her or further off?
Or was it rushing resistlessly into infinity on the wings of that pitchy night?
Who could tell, know, calculate--who could even guess, amid the horror of this gloomy blackness?
Questions, like these, left Barbican no rest; in vain he tried to grapple with them; he felt like a child before them, baffled and almost despairing.
In fact, what could be more tantalizing?
Just outside their windows, only a few leagues off, perhaps only a few miles, lay the radiant planet of the night, but in every respect as far off from the eyes of himself and his companions as if she was hiding at the other side of Jupiter! And to their ears she was no nearer.

Earthquakes of the old Titanic type might at that very moment be upheaving her surface with resistless force, crashing mountain against mountain as fiercely as wave meets wave around the storm-lashed cliffs of Cape Horn.

But not the faintest far off murmur even of such a mighty tumult could break the dead brooding silence that surrounded the travellers.

Nay, the Moon, realizing the weird fancy of the Arabian poet, who calls her a "giant stiffening into granite, but struggling madly against his doom," might shriek, in a spasm of agony, loudly enough to be heard in Sirius.

But our travellers could not hear it.