Some flew out straight and gleaming like a steel sword; others rushed here and there irregularly like chips struck off a red-hot rock; and others left long trails of glittering cosmical dust behind them like the nebulous tail of Donati's comet.
These incandescent blocks crossed each other, struck each other, crushed each other into still smaller fragments, one of which, grazing the Projectile, jarred it so violently that the very window at which the travellers were standing, was cracked by the shock.

Our friends felt, in fact, as if they were the objective point at which endless volleys of blazing shells were aimed, any of them powerful enough, if it only hit them fair, to make as short work of the Projectile as you could of an egg-shell.

They had many hairbreadth escapes, but fortunately the cracking of the glass proved to be the only serious damage of which they could complain.
This extraordinary illumination lasted altogether only a few seconds; every one of its details was of a most singular and exciting nature--but one of its greatest wonders was yet to come.

The ether, saturated with luminous matter, developed an intensity of blazing brightness unequalled by the lime light, the magnesium light, the electric light, or any other dazzling source of illumination with which we are acquainted on earth.
It flashed out of these asteroids in all directions, and downwards, of course, as well as elsewhere.

At one particular instant, it was so very vivid that Ardan, who happened to be looking downwards, cried out, as if in transport: "Oh!! The Moon! Visible at last!" And the three companions, thrilling with indescribable emotion, shot a hasty glance through the openings of the coruscating field beneath them.
Did they really catch a glimpse of the mysterious invisible disc that the eye of man had never before lit upon?
For a second or so they gazed with enraptured fascination at all they could see.