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question! Answer it, Ardan!"

"Answer it yourself, Barbican! You know more about the Moon than I do!
You know more about it than all the Nasmyths that ever lived!"

"I'm blessed if I know anything at all about it!" cried Barbican, with a
joyous laugh. "Ha, ha, ha! The first eastern shore Marylander or any
other simpleton you meet in Baltimore, knows as much about the Moon as
I do! Why we're going there, I can't tell! What we're going to do when
we get there, can't tell either! Ardan knows all about it! He can tell!
He's taking us there!"

"Certainly I can tell! should I have offered to take you there without a
good object in view?" cried Ardan, husky with continual roaring. "Answer
me that!"

"No conundrums!" cried the Captain, in a voice sourer and rougher than
ever; "tell us if you can in plain English, what the demon we have come
here for!"

"I'll tell you if I feel like it," cried Ardan, folding his arms with an
aspect of great dignity; "and I'll not tell you if I don't feel like
it!"

"What's that?" cried Barbican. "You'll not give us an answer when we ask
you a reasonable question?"

"Never!" cried Ardan, with great determination. "I'll never answer a
question reasonable or unreasonable, unless it is asked in a proper
manner!"

"None of your French airs here!" exclaimed M'Nicholl, by this time
almost completely out of himself between anger and excitement. "I don't
know where I am; I don't know where I'm going; I don't know why I'm
going; _you_ know all about it, Ardan, or at least you think you do!
Well then, give me a plain answer to a plain question, or by the
Thirty-eight States of our glorious Union, I shall know what for!"

"Listen, Ardan!" cried Barbican, grappling with the Frenchman, and with
some difficulty restraining him from flying at M'Nicholl's throat; "You
ought to tell him! It is only your duty! One day you found us both in
St. Helena woods, where we had no more idea of going to the Moon than of
sailing to the South Pole! There you twisted us both around your finger,
and induced us to follow you blindly on the most formidable journey ever
undertaken by man! And now you refuse to tell us what it was all for!"

"I don't refuse, dear old Barbican! To you, at least, I can't refuse
anything!" cried Ardan, seizing his friend's hands and wringing them
violently. Then letting them go and suddenly starting back, "you wish to
know," he continued in resounding tones, "why we have followed out the
grandest idea that ever set a human brain on fire! Why we have
undertaken a journey that for length, danger, and novelty, for
fascinating, soul-stirring and delirious sensations, for all that can
attract man's burning heart, and satisfy the intensest cravings of his
intellect, far surpasses the vividest realities of Dante's passionate
dream! Well, I will tell you! It is to annex another World to the New
One! It is to take possession of the Moon in the name of the United

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