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come! and Elphinstone of the torpedo! and the gallant Bloomsbury, and
Billsby the brave, and all our friends of the Baltimore Gun Club! And we
shall receive them with all the honors! And then we shall establish
projectile trains between the Earth and the Moon! Hurrah for J.T.
Marston!"

"Hurrah for Secretary Marston!" cried the Captain, with an enthusiasm
almost equal to Ardan's.

"Hurrah for my dear friend Marston!" cried Barbican, hardly less
excited than his comrades.

Our old acquaintance, Marston, of course could not have heard the joyous
acclamations that welcomed his name, but at that moment he certainly
must have felt his ears most unaccountably tingling. What was he doing
at the time? He was rattling along the banks of the Kansas River, as
fast as an express train could take him, on the road to Long's Peak,
where, by means of the great Telescope, he expected to find some traces
of the Projectile that contained his friends. He never forgot them for a
moment, but of course he little dreamed that his name at that very time
was exciting their vividest recollections and their warmest applause.

In fact, their recollections were rather too vivid, and their applause
decidedly too warm. Was not the animation that prevailed among the
guests of the Projectile of a very unusual character, and was it not
becoming more and more violent every moment? Could the wine have caused
it? No; though not teetotallers, they never drank to excess. Could the
Moon's proximity, shedding her subtle, mysterious influence over their
nervous systems, have stimulated them to a degree that was threatening
to border on frenzy? Their faces were as red as if they were standing
before a hot fire; their breathing was loud, and their lungs heaved like
a smith's bellows; their eyes blazed like burning coals; their voices
sounded as loud and harsh as that of a stump speaker trying to make
himself heard by an inattentive or hostile crowd; their words popped
from their lips like corks from Champagne bottles; their gesticulating
became wilder and in fact more alarming--considering the little room
left in the Projectile for muscular displays of any kind.

But the most extraordinary part of the whole phenomenon was that neither
of them, not even Barbican, had the slightest consciousness of any
strange or unusual ebullition of spirits either on his own part or on
that of the others.

"See here, gentlemen!" said the Captain in a quick imperious manner--the
roughness of his old life on the Mississippi would still break out--"See
here, gentlemen! It seems I'm not to know if we are to return from the
Moon. Well!--Pass that for the present! But there is one thing I _must_
know!"

"Hear! hear the Captain!" cried Barbican, stamping with his foot, like
an excited fencing master. "There is one thing he _must_ know!"

"I want to know what we're going to do when we get there!"

"He wants to know what we're going to do when we get there! A sensible

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