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travellers from touching each other's glasses merrily and often. Ardan
took occasion to remark that the lunar vineyards--if any existed--must
be magnificent, considering the intense solar heat they continually
experienced. Not that he counted on them too confidently, for he told
his friends that to provide for the worst he had supplied himself with a
few cases of the best vintages of Mιdoc and the Cτte d'Or, of which the
bottles, then under discussion, might be taken as very favorable
specimens.
The Reiset and Regnault apparatus for purifying the air worked
splendidly, and maintained the atmosphere in a perfectly sanitary
condition. Not an atom of carbonic acid could resist the caustic potash;
and as for the oxygen, according to M'Nicholl's expression, "it was A
prime number one!"
The small quantity of watery vapor enclosed in the Projectile did no
more harm than serving to temper the dryness of the air: many a splendid
_salon_ in New York, London, or Paris, and many an auditorium, even of
theatre, opera house or Academy of Music, could be considered its
inferior in what concerned its hygienic condition.
To keep it in perfect working order, the apparatus should be carefully
attended to. This, Ardan looked on as his own peculiar occupation. He
was never tired regulating the tubes, trying the taps, and testing the
heat of the gas by the pyrometer. So far everything had worked
satisfactorily, and the travellers, following the example of their
friend Marston on a previous occasion, began to get so stout that their
own mothers would not know them in another month, should their
imprisonment last so long. Ardan said they all looked so sleek and
thriving that he was reminded forcibly of a nice lot of pigs fattening
in a pen for a country fair. But how long was this good fortune of
theirs going to last?
Whenever they took their eyes off the Moon, they could not help noticing
that they were still attended outside by the spectre of Satellite's
corpse and by the other refuse of the Projectile. An occasional
melancholy howl also attested Diana's recognition of her companion's
unhappy fate. The travellers saw with surprise that these waifs still
seemed perfectly motionless in space, and kept their respective
distances apart as mathematically as if they had been fastened with
nails to a stone wall.
"I tell you what, dear boys;" observed Ardan, commenting on this curious
phenomenon; "if the concussion had been a little too violent for one of
us that night, his survivors would have been seriously embarrassed in
trying to get rid of his remains. With no earth to cover him up, no sea
to plunge him into, his corpse would never disappear from view, but
would pursue us day and night, grim and ghastly like an avenging ghost!"
"Ugh!" said the Captain, shuddering at the idea.
"But, by the bye, Barbican!" cried the Frenchman, dropping the subject
with his usual abruptness; "you have forgotten something else! Why
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