Neither of the travellers thought of taking a minute's rest. Each watched for some unexpected incident which should throw a new light on their uranographic studies. About five o'clock Michel distributed to them, by way of dinner, some morsels of bread and cold meat, which were rapidly absorbed, whilst no one thought of leaving the port-light, the panes of which were becoming incrusted under the condensation of vapour.
About 5.45 p.m., Nicholl, armed with his telescope, signalised upon the southern border of the moon, and in the direction followed by the projectile, a few brilliant points outlined against the dark screen of the sky. They looked like a succession of sharp peaks with profiles in a tremulous line. They were rather brilliant. The terminal line of the moon looks the same when she is in one of her octants.
They could not be mistaken. There was no longer any question of a simple meteor, of which that luminous line had neither the colour nor the mobility, nor of a volcano in eruption. Barbicane did not hesitate to declare what it was.
"What! the sun!" answered Nicholl and Michel Ardan.
"Yes, my friends, it is the radiant orb itself, lighting up the summit of the mountains situated on the southern border of the moon. We are evidently approaching the South Pole!"
"After having passed the North Pole," answered Michel. "Then we have been all round our satellite."
"Then we have no more hyperbolas, no more parabolas, no more open curves to fear!"
"An ellipsis. Instead of being lost in the interplanetary spaces it is possible that the projectile will describe an elliptical orbit round the moon."
"Moon of the moon," exclaimed Michel Ardan.
"Only I must tell you, my worthy friend, that we are none the less lost men on that account!"
"No, but in another and much pleasanter way!" answered the careless Frenchman, with his most amiable smile.
President Barbicane was right. By describing this elliptical orbit the projectile was going to gravitate eternally round the moon like a sub-satellite. It was a new star added to the solar world, a microcosm peopled by three inhabitants, whom want of air would kill before long. Barbicane, therefore, could not rejoice at the position imposed on the bullet by the double influence of the centripetal and centrifugal forces. His companions and he were again going to see the visible face of the disc. Perhaps their existence would last long enough for them to perceive for the last time the full earth superbly lighted up by the rays of the sun! Perhaps they might throw a last adieu to the globe they were never more to see again! Then their projectile would be nothing but an extinct mass, dead like those inert asteroids which circulate in the ether. A single consolation remained to them: it was that of seeing the darkness and returning to light, it was that of again entering the zones bathed by solar irradiation!